From a distance sitting at the Discovery Shelter, I knew they were tourists, and they were either from a really big city or somewhere outside the USA. It wasn't because I heard them speak, or how they looked, or what they were taking pictures of.
You see, the son had two toy guns and seemed to be playing cowboys and Indians, and the youngest daughter (this was the real give away) was wearing a Daniel Boone style (fake) raccoon skin cap.
"I like your hat!" I said with a laugh as she walked up. In return, all I got was a blank stare.
"She doesn't speak English. Just French and Spanish. We speak English, though," her mom told me, referring to herself, her husband, and their older daughter.
"Oh! Parlez-vous francais?" I said to her, smiling.
At this point, she perked up. "Oui!!"
And so it went. Her family lost interest after a while, going on to look at something else, and so we lost our translator, but between body language, laughter, patience, my broken French, and her French with a heavy Spanish accent (turns out they were from Spain), we managed to communicate, she learned a lot, I picked up some new vocabulary, and we both had a pretty unforgettably fun time. The main communication gap hit when I was trying to figured out how to ask her how to say 'deer,' and all I had to point to was as deer skull. I don't think she was sure whether I meant deer, skull, or head!
That, and the woodchuck with the long incisor was a little hard to explain because I couldn't come up with a word between the two of us for woodchuck or even squirrel (which I used to know...), but with a little struggling she saw the tooth, the hole formed by the tooth when it got too long and pierced the skull, and her face lit up when she put two and two together. Success.
So, my second language did actually come in useful for once. And I really need to get back into practicing it, but it was still really awesome!
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